The name of Cuba will go down in history for ever because of what it has done and is still doing for humanity in the fields of education, culture and health in the most difficult period that our species has known.
Quotes
"The singing of the anthem on that October 20 came at the same time as the feat of arms with which the Revolution achieved its first and most important victory over Spanish colonial troops. Bayamo’s surrender and Céspedes’ victorious entry marked the culmination of the act of rebellion begun on October 10 in La Demajagua sugar plantation which marked an turning point in the country’s history and gave birth, over the rubble of the first colonial redoubts, to the Cuban nation".
“The National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists and the Saíz Brothers Association will keep in close contact with these young cultural workers through the booming movement, which will come into being as thousands of art instructors join every year.”.
“Throughout the Battle of Ideas we have made an old dream come true: the universalization of higher education, thus making universities accessible to all the young people who graduate from the Revolution’s programs and to workers in general”.
“Throughout its lifetime, the Revolution has taught the people, training hundreds of thousands of teachers, doctors, scientists, intellectuals, artists, computer engineers and other professionals with university and post-graduate degrees in dozens of professions. This storehouse of wealth has allowed us to reduce infant mortality to low levels, unthinkable in any Third World country, and to raise life expectancy as well as the average educational level of the population up to the ninth grade.”
“Man’s consciousness does not determine the objective conditions. It is the other way around. Only after grasping this can we speak of revolution. Beautiful words, needed to convey ideas, do not suffice; profound reflection is needed.”
"Venezuela has the potential to become a model of socialist development with the resources formerly extracted by the multinationals from its rich nature and the efforts of it manual and intellectual workers. No foreign power shall determine its future. The people are the masters of their destiny and they march on to attain the highest levels of education, culture, health and full employment."
Many citizens in the richest nation of the world do not receive the same treatment, and a considerable number of them do not even vote. However, that right is exercised quite often by more than 90 per cent of our population, which knows how to read and write and has acquired a not inconsiderable culture and political knowledge.
“Neo-liberalism proscribes any interference by the State, considering it a disturbing element for the economy, as if the domestic order, the army, health, education, culture, science, the courts, the judges, and many other activities could exist without the State and its laws.”
"The capitalist system is not only oppressing and plundering our countries; the wealthiest industrial nations wish to impose to the rest of the world the bulk of the burden in the struggle on climate change. Who are they trying to fool with that? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the Third World countries will be struggling for the survival of the species."
“…the country will have much more but it will never be a consumer society. It will be a society of knowledge, of culture, of the most extraordinary human development imaginable, development in art, culture, science [...] with a breadth of liberty that no one will be able to dismantle. We know this already, we don’t need to proclaim it, but it is worth remembering.“
"Venezuela, given its extraordinary educational, cultural and social developments, and its vast energy and natural resources, is called on to become a revolutionary model for the world".